A judge Thursday sent a former top aide to US Vice President Dick Cheney to prison pending his appeal against a 30- month term for obstructing a probe into the leak of a CIA operative's name to the media, accoring to dpa. I Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's former chief of staff, was convicted in March on criminal charges of perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to investigators about the leak. He had sought to remain free while his appeal makes its way through the courts, which could take years. US District Judge Reggie B Walton rejected the motion, US media reported. The case centred on whether Libby, 56, lied to a grand jury and to FBI investigators probing whether the US administration intentionally leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame to retaliate for her husband's criticism of the Iraq war. Plame's husband, former US diplomat Joseph Wilson, alleges that the White House knowingly blew his wife's CIA cover. Her name appeared in print on July 14, 2003, shortly after Wilson wrote a newspaper article refuting one of the US administration's war arguments - that Saddam Hussein's Iraq sought to obtain yellowcake uranium from the African country of Niger. Libby was not charged with leaking Plame's name to the media but with hampering the probe into who did. He resigned in 2005 after being indicted.
